Kathy and the Night the Brakes Went Out
by patsycline
Summary: My second one-shot focusing on a different greaser girl. In this case, Two-Bit's sometime-girlfriend, Kathy. Again, I'm trying to paint the greaser girls as human beings.


Kathy and the Night the Brakes Went Out

Kathy and the Night the Brakes Went Out

By Patsycline

DISCLAIMER: I don't own The Outsiders. 

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"Kathy, have you seen your brother?"

Kathy was on her stomach on the couch, reading a magazine. She answered her mother without lifting her eyes from the page about the latest fall fashions that she would never be able to afford.

"How the Hell should I know where he is?" Kathy answered. Then, just for good measure and because she knew it would make her mother madder than anything, she added, "Am I my brother's keeper?" 

She didn't look, but Kathy could only guess that her mother was putting a hand on her hip and shaking her head. Then she heard her hard, cold voice.

"Kathy girl, that blond may come out of a bottle, but that sassiness comes out of your own damn mouth."

Kathy flipped the page slowly and didn't respond. She stared hard at the letters on the page until they became nothing but meaningless black lines and squiggles, and the whole time she was concentrating on not looking up at the mother she couldn't stand.

"I'm going to work, all right?"

"Yeah," Kathy responded, flipping another page like she was reading.

"If your brother shows up, tell him it's high time he contributes to some of the bills around here. I'm tired of supporting his unemployed rear end with him going on 20 years old."

"Yeah," Kathy said, still not looking up.

"I mean, it's not like it's been easy for me."

Kathy knew what was going to come next: _"…especially since your father left."_

"I've been basically on my own, you know. I mean, I always have been, really, but especially since your father left."

"Yeah, I know," Kathy answered cooly, turning another page.

There was silence, and then Kathy heard her mother's footsteps and the slam of the front door.

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Once her mother was gone, Kathy pulled back on her heels, shut the magazine, crawled off the couch, and headed for her bedroom. As she made her way there, she sang a little song to herself. Kathy loved to sing, but she only dared try it when she was in the house alone, which was pretty often these days. She sang in the shower, or while she did the dishes, or alone at night in her bed staring up at the cracks in the ceiling.

Before her father had walked out on them five years earlier, Kathy had also sung in the choir at the little Methodist church up the road. It made her almost laugh out loud now to picture her little 12-year-old self with the tiny silver cross around her neck singing songs to Jesus. But that girl had existed, once. Now, the silver cross was buried somewhere in the shoebox under the bed that held her mementos, and Kathy hadn't seen the inside of the Methodist church in years. She'd almost be ashamed to be seen there these days, given the kinds of things 17-year-old Kathy had done and did.

Back then, her own parents wouldn't take her to church, but Kathy had gone with her Aunt Lucille and some friends of hers sometimes. She had stopped going all of a sudden, the weekend after her father had taken off. It wasn't that she didn't want to go anymore. It was only that one day her mother told her she couldn't.

"You can't go to church anymore because we don't believe in God anymore," her mother had announced one Sunday morning as Kathy walked out into the kitchen in the only nice dress she had. Her mother had been sitting at the kitchen table as calm as you please, filing her nails and drinking her coffee. "I already called Lucille and told her you wouldn't be going. If God existed, he wouldn't have let your father run out like he did, so I don't really think you should be heading on over to that church." Then, even though Kathy had thought maybe she was imagining it, she could have sworn her mother had given her an almost spiteful smirk, almost like she knew how much the remark was going to hurt Kathy, and that hurting Kathy had sort of been the whole point.

Kathy actually liked church. She knew she wasn't really supposed to and that most kids didn't, but she did. Church was one hour a week that was a quiet kind of freedom away from her tumultuous home, and then when it wasn't quiet, it was full of singing joyful songs. Back then, Kathy had thought if you sang loud enough, God could hear you. Now she knew that God wasn't ever hearing her at all.

It had been five years since Kathy's father had taken off, but the way Kathy's mother acted, it had just taken place the day before. Kathy's mother complained and whined about everything that went on in the house, and half of the reason things were bad was because Kathy's father had walked out and the other half was because of Kathy and her hood of a brother who had been running with Tim Shepard's gang since he'd turned 13 years old. 

It had gotten so that Kathy looked back on the days that her father had been around, and she couldn't much remember who had started what fight or what argument or who had hit who first. Her father wasn't a saint, and she knew that. He'd had too much to drink too much of the time, and he didn't seem very interested in Kathy or her brother or anything except for fighting with Kathy's mother all the time. No, Kathy's father hadn't been a saint, but Kathy couldn't much blame him for leaving the way he had. 

She wanted out of that house, too. 

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The ruby-colored lipstick was in Kathy's hand and was just about to be smoothed over her lips when she heard the front door open. For a moment she thought it was her no-count, good-for-nothin' brother, but it was Two-Bit, her sometimes-sort-of boyfriend, who was something of a no-count hood himself, depending on where you met him and how he knew you.

"Kathy, you dirty girl, you home?" came his voice, and Kathy felt herself smiling even though she was feeling sort of lousy. Two Bit had that ability on her, on most everyone.

"Who you calling a dirty girl, you filthy greaser!" Kathy hollered back, laughing already as Two Bit raced into her room and goosed her. She dropped her lipstick and shrieked all at once, then rolled her eyes as Two Bit got down on his hands and knees to retrieve her make up for her. She snatched the lipstick out of his hands.

"You puttin' your face on for this party?"

"Yeah, I guess," she said. "Although I can't imagine it'll be much of a party with everyone talking about all the craziness that's been going on around here."

The weekend before, two kids that Two Bit ran around with had gotten into trouble when one of them, the quiet one named Johnny Cade, had stabbed one of the rich kids from the West side of town. Ponyboy Curtis – the kid brother of Sodapop, the biggest doll in the neighborhood – had been there, too, and then Pony and Johnny had run off to nobody knew where. That wasn't exactly true. Dallas Winston knew, only he wasn't talking. Now there was a big rumble set for the next night between the two groups, and it was all that everyone could talk about, it seemed.

"Still no word on where Johnny Cade and the kid are at?" Kathy asked.

"Dallas has got the cops believin' they're on their way to Texas, but who the Hell knows," Two Bit said. "Part of me wants to head down there to look for them, but Dally's acting like that would be a waste of my time, so who knows if he's telling the truth. Besides, if I go, it won't be until after the rumble." Two Bit fell back onto Kathy's unmade bed and flipped through some of her beauty magazines for about two seconds before tossing them onto the floor. "Your brother's gonna be in the rumble tomorrow night, ain't he?" 

"I suppose so, if you're tellin' me all the Shepard boys are gonna be there and my brother runs around with the Shepard boys. The Brumly boys'll be there, too, I reckon?"

"Yeah, the Brumly boys, too."

Kathy thought of all the boys she knew, boys like Two Bit and her brother and all their friends. Greasy, dark-eyed, dangerous boys who seemed certain that they would either live forever or die tomorrow. When she'd been 14 or15 years old, those boys had held a certain charm for her. Now, they just tired her out with their fighting and drinking. It no longer impressed her. It was strange to be so bored of things at the age of 17.

"I'm glad your brother's gonna be in on this fight," Two Bit said. "He's a tough ol' fighter and a real greaser if ever I saw one. Man, he's so greasy he glides when he walks." He pulled out his prized, black-handled switchblade and fiddled with it for a minute before slipping it back in his pocket. Two Bit just couldn't stay still to save his life.

Kathy contemplated Two Bit's observations about her brother as she peered into her vanity mirror to check her eye make-up, then added, "Yeah, he goes to the barber for an oil change, not a hair cut."

Two-Bit laughed hard, and Kathy could tell he appreciated her quick wit. Then he gave her a quick swipe on the rear end, to which Kathy responded by turning and pushing him down on the bed with both hands.

"You're gonna steal that line from me and claim it's your own, aren't you, ya lousy greaser?" she asked, grinning and pressing hard into Two-Bit's chest..

"Maybe," Two Bit laughed, acting like he couldn't move. "All right, all right, uncle. Let me up, you crazy broad."

"Shut your trap."

And they made their way out the door to Two Bit's car.

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They were halfway down Pickett when something didn't feel right. There was a sort of rumbling, then a loud thump almost like they'd run over something, and suddenly the car seemed to be moving completely out of all control. They were sliding to the right, and Two Bit was swearing and gripping the steering wheel.

"Shit, the brakes went out!"

"Jesus, Two Bit!" Kathy screamed, instinctively recoiling back into the seat and bracing her body.

Two Bit turned the wheel to the right and aimed the car for a shallow ditch on the side of the road. The mud underneath slowed them down, and they came to a rest.

"You okay?" Two Bit asked as Kathy took a breath and blinked her eyes a couple of times, trying to take in what had just happened.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm okay. The brakes went out?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Two Bit said, and the two of them got out to look at the damage. The car itself was in one piece, in large part thanks to the mud it had landed in, but it didn't look like they'd be driving it anywhere anytime soon.

"Kathy, you've got to help me push her out of here and into the lot over there," Two Bit said, motioning to the blank square of dying grass next to them. He crossed his arms and stared at his old Ford, trying to imagine the best way to haul it out of the muddy pit.

"You want me to push this god damn heap out of this god damn ditch?" Kathy said incredulously, making it clear she had no interest in doing so by fishing for a cigarette in her purse and lighting it, then carefully stepping out of the ditch to take a few puffs. She smoked as she watched Two Bit struggle, and for the briefest, most frightening second, she felt like her mother, who used to complain and whine over any and every little thing her father did and refused to help with anything he asked, just to spite him.

"Hang on," she said, tossing the smoke. She placed her pocketbook down gently and eased her way into the mud. For a few moments, she and Two Bit struggled and strained and cursed and they tried their best to push the car out, but it was no use. The Ford wasn't going to budge.

"Hell, now I really need a drink," Two Bit sighed, shaking his head and glancing off, away from the car. Kathy didn't like seeing Two Bit look defeated like that. It ruined her whole image of the kid. She knew he had saved Christmas and birthday money from his grandparents and wheedled a buck or two whenever and however he could get it, and he'd paid for the Ford himself. It was a beater with busted brakes, but it was his.

"Steve'll come and help you get it out, don't you think?" Kathy said. "It'll be all right. I bet anything it still runs, once Steve fixes the brakes. Honest. And there's no sense in missing the party. Come on, we can walk to Billy's from here," Kathy offered, putting a hand on Two Bit's shoulder, but just as she did, she took it off. She and Two Bit just weren't like that.

"I guess we could," Two Bit agreed, and he pulled the six pack of beer he had in the backseat, which had survived, and the two of them started the two mile walk to Billy Jackson's house.

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Kathy was sitting on the front porch, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette. The accident had killed her mood to have much of a good time. Two Bit was inside with Steve and some of the Shepard boys and other local greasers and hoods, talking about Two Bit's car and Johnny Cade and Ponyboy Curtis and, most of all, the upcoming rumble. It really wasn't much of a party so much as it was a bunch of people sitting around drinking and smoking and listening to records turned up too high, which was how all their parties went, really. They weren't as much fun for Kathy as they used to be.

Then she heard someone call her name, and she looked toward the screen door where she saw her friend Evie waving her over. 

Evie looked just the opposite of Kathy. Whereas Kathy was plump and full-faced and pale and, yes, a blonde (even if it did come out of a bottle), Evie was tall and lean and dark haired, with her hair ratted up and her eyes always lined in the color of coal. Kathy thought Evie and her boyfriend Steve looked alike, almost like brother and sister, or two brooding black cats.

"What's going on?" Kathy said, approaching Evie, who said nothing but motioned to Kathy to follow her toward the rear of the house. As they made their way through the crowd, they finally ended up in the kitchen, where Kathy saw Evie's boyfriend Steve on the phone, smoking a cigarette and looking worried. Two-Bit was sitting on the kitchen counter next to him, listening to Steve's side of the conversation intently. It was odd to see him so serious. Kathy grabbed two beers out of the refrigerator and followed Evie down the back steps.

"What's that about?" Kathy asked, handing a beer to Evie.

"I can't tell, but I think it's Sodapop Curtis on the other end. Maybe it's something about Soda's kid brother. I tried to listen in, but Steve waved me out of the room."

"Shit," Kathy said as Evie led her toward the back fence. "I don't think this neighborhood could take much more excitement than last weekend."

The moon was out and it had gotten chillier since Kathy and Two Bit had gotten to the party. Evie and Kathy leaned on the chain link and stared into the neighbor's backyard. There were white sheets hanging on the clothesline, and in the moonlight, they looked almost like ghosts staring back at them. Then Evie broke the silence.

"All right, I swore to God I wouldn't say anything, but I can't keep my mouth shut anymore. Especially since she's gone already anyway."

Kathy knew she was about to hear a good story, and she lit another cigarette. 

"What the Hell are you talking about, Evie?"

Evie glanced over her shoulder again, then motioned for Kathy to light her a smoke.

"It's about Sandy."

"Soda's girl?" Kathy questioned, picturing the sweet, natural blonde Soda had been running with for the past year or so. Sandy was from their neighborhood, but sometimes she carried herself like she was better than Evie and Kathy. Even so, Kathy couldn't think of too many bad things to say about her. "What's up?"

Evie lowered her voice even though there wasn't anyone out in the backyard but them. 

"She's in trouble."

Kathy's eyes opened wider.

"How'd you find out?"

"Last weekend me and Steve went to the game with her and Soda, and she told me in the girls' bathroom," Evie answered. "I told her she had to tell her parents, and the very next day she tells them and Soda too. And Soda, who's already losing his mind over his brother being gone, he wants to marry her, right? But her parents say no, she's got to go stay with her grandmother in Florida and give the baby up for adoption. So she'll come back to school next year and finish a year behind."

Kathy bit her thumbnail and digested the story. It wasn't the first time some girl in their class would disappear to live with some relative and then show up seven or eight months later acting like nothing had ever happened. Everyone knew the real deal, of course, but no one talked about it. It seemed hypocritical to Kathy that the boys who got those girls in trouble walked around as free as you please, but it was the girls who had to deal with the grief and the pain and the nasty gossip head on. She felt sorry for Sandy, and in this case, for Sodapop, too.

"That's rotten for both of them," Kathy offered. "Sandy must be a wreck, and I can't imagine how messed up Soda must feel right about now."

"I know it," said Evie, "I know it. Hell, I don't know what I'd do if it happened to me."

"What do you mean?" Kathy asked. "If you got caught, you'd just marry Steve that much earlier." 

Evie looked at Kathy for a moment and glanced over at the sheets on the clothesline. She looked like she wanted to say something but didn't. Then Evie rubbed her fingers over the ID bracelet on her left wrist. Kathy knew Steve had given her the bracelet a few weeks ago for her 18th birthday, and she also knew Steve had saved up his DX money to buy it and have it inscribed with Steve Evie Always. No one had ever given Kathy anything like that. Probably no one ever would.

"I guess I would marry him that much sooner, but we're always pretty careful," Evie said. "Or lucky."

Evie knew exactly how her life was going to turn out, Kathy thought. She was going to do hair and Steve was going to work on cars and they were going to get married at the end of the school year. Kathy didn't know whether to be jealous of Evie or relieved she wasn't in her shoes. Kathy didn't have a clue in creation as to what she was going to do after she graduated, but she knew for sure her plans didn't involve getting married to Two Bit or any other boy.

"Have you been careful with Two Bit?" Evie asked, elbowing Kathy in the side.

"Sure, every time," Kathy said. "I'm not stupid."

The truth was, Kathy and Two Bit had only gone that far twice, and they hadn't been careful either time, but Kathy didn't want to tell Evie that. Kathy had only given in because she'd had too much to drink and Two Bit had whined and begged so much it was almost pathetic. She knew he'd probably messed around with other girls, too, and Kathy figured she wouldn't ever go that far with Two Bit again. It hadn't even felt good like all the girls had said it would. The whole time she'd just stared at the top of the back seat of his car and winced through the pain and tried not to think about getting in trouble.

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Evie and Kathy kept up their gossiping and smoking and drinking until their conversation was interrupted by someone calling out into the backyard for Evie. Kathy looked up, and there was Steve, standing in the kitchen doorway.

"Let's go back in," Evie said.

When Kathy and Evie made their way back inside, they found Two Bit still sitting on the counter, only now his face had a strange quiet expression. A few of the boys from Tim Shepard's gang were also sitting around although Kathy didn't see Tim or her brother anywhere. Steve was standing by the phone with a pained look on his face.

"What?" Kathy asked, tossing the empty bottle in the trash. "Somebody say something."

"That was Soda who called," Steve said as Evie walked over to him and put her hand on the small of his back protectively. "Turns out his brother and Johnny have been hanging out in some abandoned church in Windrixville this whole time."

"I thought you said they were in Texas," Kathy said, looking at Two Bit.

"You think Dally wouldn't lie to me to protect them?" Two Bit said, sliding off the countertop and heading for the refrigerator to get another drink. 

"The church burned down in some kind of accident," Steve continued. "Soda was confused about how it all happened, but I guess Dally was there, too."

Evie said quietly to no one in particular, "He was helping to hide them, I knew it."

"Now Dally's in the hospital, and so is Johnny. It looks like Dally's gonna make it, but Johnny's real bad off."

Kathy had hung out at parties and drive-ins and all the other places they all liked to go, and Johnny had always been there in the background, somewhere, but she hadn't heard him open his mouth but a few times. All she could think about as she pictured him were his sad black eyes and the deep scar on his cheek. After Steve delivered the news, there was an awkward silence punctuated only by the popping open of beer bottles and the clicks of cigarette lighters. Something about a bad situation always made everyone want to drink and smoke about ten times more than they already did, Kathy thought to herself.

"What about the Curtis kid?" one of the Shepard gang said.

"He's all right," Steve answered, "he's gonna be all right, the little pain in the ass." But Kathy could tell by the way he was saying it that he was glad.

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After that, no one much felt like sticking around. Two Bit and Steve agreed that they'd head on over to the Curtis house to say hello to Pony the next morning, so Two Bit wanted to get on home. Steve and Evie decided to stay for one more beer. 

Two Bit was talking to some of the boys in the front yard, but Evie walked Kathy to the front door. When Kathy turned to say goodbye, she took a drag on her cigarette and asked Evie, "You ever get sick of running around with these kids?" 

Evie gave Kathy a half grin and said ruefully, "I'm not sure I know how to do anything else." And then Evie did a strange thing. She reached over and hugged Kathy, hard. Kathy froze up a little bit. None of them were much of the hugging type. But Kathy felt her own arms wrap around Evie and give her a little squeeze.

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She and Two Bit were almost home now, walking down the streets all lit up by the street lamps. Her feet were killing her, and she'd taken off her shoes and slipped them in her purse. Even though she hadn't felt it much at the party, once she and Two Bit started the hike home, she'd realized she was drunk. She didn't really mind. It would just make going to sleep that much easier. 

She wasn't going to end up like Sandy or Evie, she knew it. She was sure of it. She was going to make her own way out of this damn neighborhood full of hoods and fights and dead boys and nothing. And she would do it alone. She wouldn't need any boy to marry her or get her into trouble to be able to tell her story. She was going to get out of this neighborhood, this town. Even though in one small space in her heart, in her brain, Kathy knew this wasn't true, that she probably would end up like all the other girls she knew, once in a while she liked hanging on to the part that believed otherwise.

They were coming closer to Kathy's block when Kathy asked Two Bit, "Didja know I used to sing in church?" Then she punched him on the shoulder, hard.

"Why are you hitting me, silly girl?" Two Bit answered, laughing. "You know, I used to sing in church, too. I used to preach and sing and hand out communion. The Reverend Two Bit."

Kathy giggled and hit him again.

"Hey, I'm sorry your brakes went out, really I am."

"Yeah, me, too," Two Bit said.

"You wanna hear me sing? Sing like I used to in church?"

Two Bit shook his head and replied, "Sure, what the Hell." For once, his date was drunker than him.

Kathy started to sing one of the little spirituals she used to know, about walking closer with the Lord or something like that. She messed up on the words, but the sentiment was there.

"You gotta pretty little voice, Kathy," Two Bit said, genuinely, but Kathy ignored him.

She was going to get out of this neighborhood.

"Kathy, I mean it, you got a nice voice."

"I know," Kathy answered, and she started belting it out even louder. She was singing for real now, singing louder than she did in the shower when no one was home, or in the kitchen when she did the dishes, or in her bed when she stared at the cracks in the ceiling. Even louder than when she'd been a little girl in church, dressed in a snow-white choir robe with a velvet green collar and the little silver cross around her neck. She was crying out at the top of her lungs.

"For Christ's sake, Kathy, hang on!" Two Bit yelled after her, but Kathy heard the catch in his voice that assured her he was half laughing as he chased her.

Because Kathy was running now, barefoot on the blacktop road, singing until her throat hurt. She was throwing out the notes as loud as she could, and as she did, she imagined them making their way up to the tops of the houses, and to the clouds and the stars, maybe even all the way up to God.


End file.
